Night Broken

13

They left at dusk. Ariana had only managed to magic the wolves through Mary Jo, so Alec was with those of us who waved them out. When they were gone, most of the pack dispersed to their own houses. Lucia busied herself cleaning up the havoc that the pack had made of Honey’s house, and Christy and Jesse helped her. I understood the need to do something.

“Mercy.” It was Ariana, but it was something more, too, so I was careful to move slowly when I turned around.

“I have to go,” she said. “I wish … but I cannot stay with my magic depleted and so many wolves about.”

I wrapped my arms around myself. “I understand. Thank you, Ariana. You gave them a chance.”

She looked down. “I hope so,” she said in a low voice. “I hope so.”

I didn’t know what to say to her fear, not with mine so wild in my heart. So I watched her get into Samuel’s car and drive off, and tried not to remember that I knew the address.

I went back into the house through the back door. Christy was cooking with Lucia and Auriele. They looked like they were making enough food for an army, even though everyone was gone.

“Where’s Jesse?” I asked.

“Upstairs with Darryl,” Christy said. “She doesn’t want to talk to me, but maybe you’ll have better luck.” Christy looked tired and worried. Her eyes were red. I hoped mine weren’t. “If I had stayed here, where I was needed, everyone would be safe now.”

I wiped my hands over my face to cover whatever expression might have crossed it. She wasn’t trying to shut me out, she was trying to save Adam and the rest.

“If I had married a doctor, like my mother told me to, then I wouldn’t have Joel to grieve over,” Lucia said unexpectedly. She was good at being quiet and unobtrusive. “And that would be a waste. If you had stayed here, this might not have happened, but maybe you’d have gotten in a car wreck and died.” She shrugged. “It does no good to play with what-ifs.”

“Well said,” Auriele told her. “‘Play the hand you have,’ my papa liked to say.”

I left them to their conversation and trotted up the stairs, where I could hear a movie running quietly. Darryl sat on one side of the couch nearest to the TV and Jesse on the other.

I sat down in the middle. “So,” I said to Darryl, “do you think Korra is going to be as good an avatar as Aang?”

“Who’s Aang?” he asked.

“You started him with Korra?” I accused Jesse. “That’s not okay. It’s like reading the last chapter of the book first.”

“Honey doesn’t have The Last Airbender series,” Jesse said in a low voice. “It was Korra or bust.”

“I think I should check on the cooks,” Darryl said. He left with cowardly haste.

I reached over and turned up the volume of the show until I was pretty sure we had privacy.

“I like Korra,” Jesse told me in a melancholy voice. “She’s not perfect, but she tries hard.”

“Like your mom,” I said.

She nodded. “I love her.”

“And she loves you back,” I said.

She nodded. “She does. She’s not perfect, but she’s my mom, you know?”

“You’ve met my mother,” I told her, and she laughed. I loved my mom, too, but I was very glad she lived in Portland.

“I’m glad I have you and Dad,” she said. “That way, it’s okay that Mom is…”

Flaky? Selfish? Horrible?

“Mom,” she concluded.

We watched Korra for a while longer. Darryl rejoined us as soon as we turned the volume back down.

“I am not wanted in the kitchen,” he said. Darryl loved to cook. “Christy says that men can’t cook.”

“You’re a great cook,” Jesse told him.

He smiled at her, a gentle smile he saved for Auriele and Jesse. “I know. I’m better than any of them, but they won’t listen to me.”

“I think I like Korra better than Aang,” I said after we’d watched another five minutes. “She gets to go do things instead of waiting around for other people.”

“I hear you,” agreed Darryl.

“I think I’m going to go check on Medea,” I said.

With Lucia’s big dog in the house, we’d shut Medea in the tack room out in the stables. The horses in the pasture whinnied at me when I walked by. I threw them a couple of flakes of alfalfa hay, though there was plenty of grass in the pasture. A couple of extra flakes wouldn’t hurt them.

Medea greeted me with frantic purrs. I sat down on the wooden floor next to her and petted her, trying not to think.

There were two Western saddles bedecked with silver on wooden saddle racks and another pair that were more everyday trail saddles. Blue ribbons and big, oversized awards plastered one wall. Everything was covered with dust, as if, like the horses, they had not been used since Peter died.

Eventually, Darryl came out to talk.

“Hey, girl,” he said from the doorway.

“Hey.”

“Jesse was summoned as taster in the kitchen,” he told me. “They should be over at the house by now, in the middle of changing.” Adam’s plan had been to find a quiet spot near Guayota’s place so that all the wolves could change. Then they would wait until the small hours of the night and take what advantage surprise might offer them.

I’d been keeping track of the time, too. “I’ll let you know if our mating bond tells me anything,” I told him, my attention firmly on the way Medea’s rabbit-soft coat rippled under my fingers.

“We’ll all feel it if anyone dies,” Darryl told me after a very long moment. “Why don’t you come into the house? I’ll keep Christy in line.”

I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. He smiled sheepishly. “Okay. But I expect she’ll behave in front of everyone, anyway.”

“It’s not Christy,” I assured him. “I just don’t have any comfort for anyone left in me, Darryl. And if someone even looks at me with sympathy … no. I’ll wait here for a while more.”

He hesitated. “I told him I would look after you.” His voice was soft, as soft as I’d ever heard it.

I wiped my eyes angrily but managed a half laugh. “Shut up. Samuel told me not to mourn until I had something to mourn about.”

“Yeah,” Darryl said softly. “Yeah.”

He leaned against the doorframe and kept me company for a few minutes before returning to the house. It would be hours before we knew anything, anything at all. Tibicenas could be killed, temporarily, if they caught them in dog form. They were going to try to take them out as early in the fight as they could, and if that didn’t destroy Guayota or send him back where he came from, they would then concentrate on Guayota. Seven werewolves and a walker against a god.

I curled up around Medea and prayed as fervently as I ever had. I had faith that it would help. But death isn’t a tragedy to God, only to those left behind.

I finished, and only then realized that Stefan was sitting on a hay bale on the wall on the far side of the stable aisle, where he could look through the tack room door and see me.

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said. “I told you I’d come talk tonight, but I had some trouble finding you.” He paused. “I talked to Darryl at the house. He told me what’s going on. A volcano god, eh? If I’d realized exactly what that address meant … I’m not sure I’d have gotten it for you.” He looked away. “I think the talk I promised you ought to wait until—until later, I suppose.”

I’d forgotten about the talk. Somehow, it didn’t seem important to fuss about something he could have done nothing about. Any other day, I might have gotten self-righteously angry. I’d worked really hard not to freak at the bonds I shared with Adam and the pack. I wasn’t sure I had it in me not to freak about a bond with a vampire, even one I liked. But today I couldn’t find the energy to lie to myself and believe that blaming Stefan for the mess would make anything better.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “It wasn’t your fault. I understand why you didn’t tell me that the bond was still real. I agreed to it in the first place, and I’d do it again, even knowing the consequences. Lies aren’t always destructive, are they? Sometimes a few lies hurt no one. You have nothing to apologize for, and I have nothing to be mad about.”

He patted the hay bale beside him. I picked up Medea, got to my feet, and stepped down into the stable aisle. He smelled like popcorn, and it was subtly reassuring. I sat down next to him, and Medea deserted my lap for his.

His fingers found the favored spot under her ear, and she closed her eyes and purred. I leaned against his shoulder, and he waited with me.

The barn was dark, the only light came from the bare bulb in the tack room. It smelled of leather, hay, and horses. I could hear the two horses eating outside and Medea’s purring. An owl hooted from somewhere nearby. In the distance, very far distance, I could hear a car’s engine. Someone coming home from a Saturday shopping expedition or an early movie.

I closed my eyes. Stefan’s arm tightened and loosened under my temple as he petted Medea. I couldn’t hear his heartbeat or listen to him breathe. Usually when he forgot to make himself humanlike, the oddness made me uncomfortable, but tonight it was peaceful. I only wanted one heartbeat in my ear.

Adam’s.

The horses took off running, their hooves a rapid thunder in the night. I pulled my head off Stefan’s shoulder to see if I could hear what spooked them.

“The wind changed, and they smelled me,” Stefan said. “That’s all. They’ll be back in a few minutes because they aren’t really scared.” He leaned his head back against the wall. “I remember when all I wanted was to ride a horse. We had four at my home when I was growing up. Two were plow horses. One was a pony my mother used to go to market. The fourth was a riding horse that just showed up one day wearing the remains of a saddle. One of his knees was enlarged, and it was sore for months afterward. It never really went down, but it didn’t seem to bother him much after he rested up. We kept waiting for someone to come claim him, but no one ever did. I learned to ride on him.”

The car was getting closer though still probably a couple of miles out. Something about it made me nervous—I stood up. It sounded like the car Juan Flores had been driving when he broke into my garage.

“Stefan,” I said. “How many people can you do your instant transport with, if we’re only talking a couple of miles?”

“Four. Maybe five if I don’t need to be conscious after the last one. You need me to take you somewhere?”

“Not me,” I said. “There are only three other houses on this road, and the rest of the land is farming. I’ve heard a Toyota V6, two different Chevy trucks, a Ford truck, and a Mercedes while I’ve been here. There is a Chevy Malibu approaching us right now, and Guayota drove a Malibu when he attacked me at my garage.”

“You think Guayota is coming here,” Stefan said.

“Yes, I do.”

If Stefan could get Jesse, Lucia, and Christy away from here, they might make it out alive. I didn’t think I could convince Darryl to go. Or Auriele.

I put Medea down. If the worst happened, I didn’t want her trapped in the stable. I grabbed a pitchfork that was leaning against the wall and set off for Adam’s SUV at a brisk walk, my ear tuned to the still-distant car. “Would you take four people from here to—” Where? “My house.” The Vanagon was still at the ruins of my garage, but Jesse’s car would be there. “Once you get them all there, call Adam’s cell phone. You’ll probably get a man named Gary. Tell him what happened. Then get everyone into Jesse’s car and drive.”

I opened the passenger side of the SUV and retrieved the S&W 29 and a box of ammunition from under the front seat. The car was still coming, so I headed for the house at a sprint.

Stefan stayed beside me. “I could take you out of here.”

“You do, and I will never forgive you.” I opened the back door but didn’t go in. “I’m second in the pack, Stefan. That means I don’t desert anyone. If you can get the humans out of here, I will owe you for the rest of my life. Take Auriele if you can.”

He looked down at me, then did the strangest thing. He kissed me. A quick butterfly kiss that gave me no chance to react. “I’ll do my best to keep your lambs safe, Mercy. If I can get them all to safety, I’ll return.”

“No,” I said. “Vampires and fire don’t mix. Don’t throw yourself away, Stefan. Let Adam know that Guayota is coming here—Ariana magicked him, and some of the wolves, so they can survive fire. They’ll come as soon as they can.”

The pitchfork was a weapon of last resort, and I set it under some bushes, where, hopefully, I could grab it in a hurry, and the bad guys wouldn’t notice it. I’d left Darryl and Christy arguing with Auriele, but Jesse and Lucia had already been taken to safety.

I wasn’t out front long when Darryl came out the door, turning off the porch and yard lights as he did so. He strolled out to me and listened to the car. The driver had been driving back and forth a bit. Country roads can be tricky when all you have is a direct line to your target—was Guayota tracking Christy somehow?

“How sure are you about this being Guayota?” Darryl asked.

I shook my head. “Could be a lost tourist. Could be a couple of kids out exploring. Could be a neighbor who bought a new car. Did you talk Auriele into going?”

“No,” said Darryl. “That took Christy.” He started stripping off his clothes and began his change at the same time. I could tell by the sparkly feeling in the werewolf magic that followed all the wolves around. Tonight, it felt especially obvious, as though all my senses were on high alert. “Never thought I’d be grateful that Christy can lead people around by their noses before. Your tame vampire took Christy and promised to be back for Auriele. I am very grateful that all vampires can’t jump places like that. They’d rule the world, no doubt.”

Darryl dropped his shirt to the ground and started shedding wristwatch and rings. “If this is Guayota, we don’t have a chance.”

“I know.” All day I’d had this feeling of impending doom. Usually, I’m the optimist in the party, but today was different.

“It’s going to take me about twelve minutes to change even pushing it, and whoever that is, they’ll be here in two. I called Adam’s phone, but no one picked up. Likely right about now they are all in the middle of changing, and no one will be able to listen to the message. Stefan said to tell you that he’d keep calling until he got hold of someone. He said that if he had the juice left, he’d come back and help. But from the looks of him when he vanished with Christy, I think it’ll be a while. If that car is Guayota, it will be too late for the two of us. I watched that fight in the garage, and Adam says you’d both have been toast if it weren’t for Tad.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s too bad Tad is locked up in Fairyland.”

“We could run,” Darryl said.

“No,” I told him. “The tibicenas are faster than we are. Gary and I ran from them, and if Coyote hadn’t pulled one last trick, they’d have caught us. This is pack territory—” I tapped my foot on the ground. “That helps, in a fight.” Not much, but we were going to need everything we had.

“I’m going to the barn to finish changing. It will be safer if I have a few seconds to orient myself. My wolf is aggressive when I first change.” He kicked off his shoes and dropped his slacks. “I’ll come help as soon as I can.”

“If—” I said. “If there is no use, you run, okay?”

Darryl shook his head, his eyes bright gold in the moonlight. His teeth were sharper than they’d been a second ago. “My wolf won’t leave you, Mercy.”

He left, a dark shadow among darker shadows, almost invisible to my eyes, but I heard his rapid footfalls as he ran for the barn.

I saw the headlights of the oncoming car for just a moment before the engine cut out, and, a moment later, the headlights went dark.

Night is seldom really silent. The light wind rustled the branches of the trees in the yard and the grass in the nearby fields. Spring frogs croaked, and the night hunters added their calls. But, gradually, the other sounds died and left only the wind.

The odds that the car was Guayota’s skyrocketed into the certainty zone. Our best chance was for me to kill the tibicenas, one of whom was my friend, and then to hold Guayota off in the hope that, somehow, someone was able to reach Adam. Gary could answer the phone. Maybe that was why he’d had to go with them.

Maybe Guayota would finish off Darryl and me, then head back to his home, where he’d find Adam and the others waiting for him. Probably he’d track down Christy, if that’s what he was doing. It must not be a perfect method of finding her, because she was gone and he was still coming. Maybe Guayota would manage to kill us all—it felt like that kind of night.

From the house, I heard Cookie bark an alert. She was answered by two hunting howls, high-pitched and hungry, one on either side of me. Judging by what I had learned while Gary and I had been chased by the pair of tibicenas, they were maybe a hundred yards apart. The sound they made wasn’t the same one that had made my blood freeze when Coyote had taken Gary and me out. Maybe that meant they were still in a vulnerable form, something I could kill.

A darker shadow moved where there hadn’t been a shadow before, and Juan Flores, who was Guayota, stepped out where I could see him. I didn’t bother aiming my gun at him, though I remembered that he’d staggered back when I’d shot him before. He stopped at the edge of the lawn.

“Where is she?” he asked. “Where have you put her?”

He looked so human—but so did I, I supposed.

“She’s gone,” I told him. “We sent her away when we heard your car.”

“I don’t understand you,” he said, a faint frown between his eyebrows.

“I know,” I told him. For a moment I wasn’t scared, just sad. He was so lost. “She’s not who you think she is.”

“Yes,” he said, and, for a moment, the sadness in his voice echoed mine. “Yes, she is. Do you think that I would not recognize the face of my beloved? I looked across the room, and there she was—she knew it, too. I come to you this night, made strong from hot new blood, but I need her to feel complete. Without her by my side, I am always hungry.”

More bodies somewhere, Tony, I thought.

“We are ready to renew the hunt, and she cannot be hidden from me,” continued Flores in this creepy, reasonable voice I remembered from before. “But she might be hurt if we are forced to continue to hunt her, that is the nature of a hunt. I don’t want to hurt her. If you tell me where she is, I won’t hurt her.”

He was sincere. He didn’t want to hurt her. I thought of Kyle’s story and wondered if perhaps he had not meant to hurt the goddess he’d kidnapped and raped. Intention and results are often different.

“No,” I said.

As soon as I refused, Flores’s eyes flared red, and his face, though still human-featured, lost any resemblance to a real human expression. “Take her,” he said.

Something dark and hot moved in the darkness, and I raised the gun and fired at the tibicena charging from my right as rapidly as I could, though even with my night vision, all I could see were its red eyes, as if it somehow drew the darkness around itself like a cloak.

This was not the dog that I’d killed in my garage; this was the bigger, faster version I’d seen the possibility of when Coyote had taken me to visit Guayota’s house. As Coyote had promised, the bullets—and I knew from the bright spots that appeared and vanished on the tibicena’s body that I was hitting it—didn’t even slow it down. When I felt its too-hot breath, I dropped the gun and dove for my pitchfork.

And then we danced.

I could not trust my sight to tell me where it was, but the coyote knew, and I let her guide my steps. The pitchfork was a better weapon against the tibicena than the mop, crowbar, or wrench had been against Guayota. The long wooden handle didn’t heat up, and the metal ends didn’t burn as long as I didn’t leave them on the tibicena too long, because it had quickly become apparent that the tibicena, like Guayota, was a creature of fire, of the volcano where it had been birthed. As a test, I hit the beast hard, sinking the tines in a few inches, then jerking them out.

The wounds glowed red, and something bubbled out for a moment, but it took two seconds—I counted—for the holes to close. I didn’t dare hit it any harder, or I’d lose my weapon. The wounds also disturbed whatever it was that kept me from seeing the tibicena, and I caught a glimpse of it, huge and hairy.

Guayota was turning in a slow circle, ignoring my fight with his tibicena as he searched for something—Christy.

I danced faster.

For a few minutes, we were at a stalemate, the tibicena and I. I couldn’t hurt it, but I was moving too fast for it to hit me. As long as I could keep the speed up, and my coyote could sense its attacks, I was okay. A few minutes is a long time in a fight—and all I had to do was hold out long enough for Darryl to come.

But there were two tibicenas. I caught a glimpse of the second one when it slapped me on the head with its paw.

I stood on cracked blacktop in a school yard. There was a swing set in front of me, and Coyote sat on the only swing, moving it back and forth a few inches by wiggling his bare toes on the ground. It was one of those swings you see in parks and schools, with thick chains attached to a big, flat strip of rubber. The pink scrunchie was gone, his braid bound by a strip of white leather.

“I’m dreaming,” I said flatly.

“You’re dying,” corrected Coyote, lifting his head from where he’d been watching his feet, to meet my eyes. “Your neck is broken. Do you feel any different? I always wondered what other people feel when they are dying. For me it is usually like this—” He let go of the chains and clapped his hands once. “And I’m back to normal except not quite where I was a moment ago.”

“How do I kill Guayota?”

He shook his head and backed up slowly, letting the swing ride up his back. “You can’t. It isn’t possible. Besides, you are dying.” It didn’t sound like my death bothered him very much. He tilted his head, and said, “Do you know that burn on your cheek looks like war paint?”

“Gary thinks you’re just playing with us,” I told him.

Coyote nodded soberly as he hopped gracefully on the swing and let it carry him forward, then back. “Gary has reason to, but he doesn’t think like you do. He thinks—Coyote hates me and has me thrown in jail.” He leaned into the swing and used his legs and back to build momentum. “You think—what good comes from Gary Laughingdog in jail with the gift of prophecy he hates so much? Could it be that perhaps, just perhaps, both of Coyote’s children have a chance of surviving if they are working together?” He gave me a sly look. “Not that it wasn’t funny to see his face when he realized we’d stolen a police car, and he was parked in front of the police station.”

I thought about what he’d said. “Why did you show me the tibicenas?”

“Didn’t you want to save your friend Joel?”

“You answer a lot of questions with questions.”

“Do I?” His smile turned smug, and he leaped out of the swing, landing on his feet but letting his body fall forward until his hands rested lightly on the ground. He lowered his eyelids and suddenly there was nothing lighthearted, nothing funny about him, just a primordial fierceness that burned down my spine.

“I guess you aren’t dead yet, are you?” he whispered, and the words wrapped around me as my vision went dark. “Good thing coyotes are hard to kill.”

I opened my eyes and realized I was crumpled on the cool damp grass, and there was a tibicena crouched over me, licking the long wound in my arm. I couldn’t move. My body knew that moving would hurt, and it just wouldn’t respond to my urgent demands that it do so.

I could hear fighting, but it was Auriele’s battle cry that let me take my eyes off the tibicena guarding me.

I’d never seen Darryl and Auriele fight together, and they were beautiful. For the first time in my life, I wished I were a singer like the Marrok and both of his sons were because only music would do them justice.

Auriele was still in human form and she held my pitchfork as a weapon. Her clothes were burned, and, I imagined, hidden by the night, there were also burns on her skin. She was muscle and grace and speed as she stabbed and pivoted, jumped and dodged around her husband.

Darryl’s brindle coat made him nearly as hard to track as the tibicenas’ magic made them. Most wolves fight with instinct. Some, as I had tonight, fight with instinct and training. But a rare few hold on to enough humanity to use strategy. And that strategy was what made him and Auriele so impressive. He charged and leaped, she struck and rolled, and somehow neither of them was where they’d been when the tibicena who wasn’t guarding me lunged and tangled herself up with Guayota.

If it had only been the tibicena they fought, I would have had no fear.

Guayota, even in his fiery-dog form, was not as large as his tibicena, but there was no question who was the nastier predator. While the tibicena, Darryl, and Auriele fought with everything in them, Guayota played. Darryl bled from a dozen small wounds and, as I watched, Guayota struck him again, and a shallow cut stretched from Darryl’s shoulder to his hip. It was a wound from Guayota’s claw only, without the heat he could generate, though the wet grass smoked, and he left blackened patches wherever he stood for longer than a breath.

Are you going to let them die while you watch? Impossible to tell if the voice was Coyote’s or my own.

My muscles would just not move. I struggled like a bodybuilder trying to lift weights that were a hundred pounds too heavy, and the effort built up to a growl in my chest and out my throat.

The tibicena quit licking my arm and growled back.

I stopped struggling as I met its eyes briefly and saw Joel in them. The tibicena shook his head, and the long, rocklike hairs that ruffed his neck rattled together. The connection broken between us, he went back to my arm. He had worked a piece of skin loose and was tearing it away, swallowing it.

I had a terrible, wonderful idea.

“Joel,” I said, and the tongue that had been traveling back to my arm paused, and his eyes met mine, again, eyes that were a dark, sullen red that was more like garnets than rubies.

Didn’t you want to save your friend Joel? Coyote had asked me when I asked him why he’d shown me what the tibicenas were. And I’d seen that the spells that tied Joel to Guayota’s immortal child were a lot like pack bonds.

I didn’t have the walking stick, but I could see the struggle that Joel still fought. Stefan had said something about bonds when he’d been apologizing for not breaking the one between us. He’d implied that a bond taken willingly was stronger than one that was forced.

“Answer the questions I ask you, and I can help,” I said, my tongue thick in my mouth. I had practice drawing on my mate’s power, and now I drew it around me, finding that I could borrow a little strength. That was useful, but the important part of Adam’s power that I preempted was his authority. “You don’t have to say your response out loud. Joel Arocha, I see you.”

Garnet eyes glittered with borrowed light.

“Will you join with us, the Columbia Basin Pack, to hunt, to fight, to live and run under the full moon?” There were ritual words, but I’d been taught that the ritual was secondary to intent in all werewolf magic. I thought of Joel—tough, thoughtful, and big-hearted—and welcomed him into my family.

I paused but held his eyes. “I claim you,” I told him, feeling the familiar gathering of pack magic until it burned in my throat, until the next words were determined more by the magic than by me. “We claim you, Joel Arocha, son of Texas, son of the Canary Islands, guardian of four-footed cousins. By my flesh and blood that is the flesh and blood that belongs to the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack is our bond sealed. From this day forward, you are mine to me and mine.”

Pack ties, mating ties did not break the bond between Stefan and me because they were two different magics: vampire and werewolf. But the spells I’d seen wrapping around Joel were similar to pack bonds.

The first sign that what I’d done had worked was the now-familiar burn in my chest as the pack absorbed another member. Joel staggered, and for a moment his weight pressed down on me unbearably. I think I blacked out because my vision did that weird jump thing, where one moment I was staring at one thing, then the next I was looking at something different, though I couldn’t remember moving my gaze.

The tibicena who was Joel was no longer standing over me, but fighting with the other tibicena. I couldn’t see Darryl, but Auriele was lying with a knee bent in the wrong direction, and she wasn’t moving.

“What did you do?” Guayota’s voice was oddly slurred, but I could hear the anger in it. I couldn’t turn my head, but Guayota moved into my field of view.

The huge fiery-dog form that Guayota wore was oddly lopsided. His left side looked exactly as I remembered. Glowing red eye, crackled skin that showed the moving currents of molten substance that flowed just beneath. The other side was dark, the light beneath wholly extinguished, and as he staggered, half dragging himself from the battleground to where I lay, the outer surface of the dead side began to lighten to gray and crumble when he moved.

“How did you steal—” said Guayota—and then Adam was there, a great blue-silver wolf. Adam and Warren and Honey, who landed on Guayota at the same time, their fury as bright and shining as Guayota had ever been.

“Screw me and stake me out.” Gary’s voice was in my ear. “I think she’s dead. How could she be burned this badly and not be dead?” He was talking about me, I realized, but I didn’t remember getting burned. Coyote had told me my neck was broken. Gary was still talking. “I’ve sent back steaks that were this overdone. Mercy?”

There were other noises in the background: growls and howls and cries of pain.

“Not dead yet,” I told Gary. I had to say it again before he understood me.

He huffed half a laugh. “Finally found a sibling I could stand to talk to for more than ten minutes, and…” He didn’t finish that sentence. “I gotta tell you, you look bad, Mercy.”

I licked my lips. They cracked, but I talked anyway. “Got here sooner than expected. You did, I mean. Did you get a call?” Is Adam here? I’d be safe if Adam was really here. But that wasn’t true, was it? Coyote had told me I was dying.

“No, but someone’s phone was going off every two minutes until one of the werewolves killed it. Please save me from being trapped in a car with that many angry werewolves ever again. They were all mostly changed to wolf, barely, when I had another Seeing, one of the big ones. Saw you and a couple of werewolves fighting Guayota on Honey’s front lawn and realized why I had to go with the wolves. Took me a while to get them to understand. And once they did, I had to drive because they were all too much werewolf already—and let me tell you, oncoming headlights when you have a migraine are no kind of fun.”

A cry, the same kind of bone-chilling cry that Gary and I had heard once before, cut through the sounds of battle and Gary’s soothing voice like a knife.

Gary turned to look, and that let me see one of the tibicenas bite deep into the other and shake it until it turned into a much smaller thing. I recognized the mutated woman that the walking stick had once shown me. Joel, the tibicena who was Joel, dropped her to the ground. She writhed once, then was still.

“Look,” Auriele said, and I was happy to know she wasn’t dead. “Look at Guayota.” I strained my eyes to the side until I could see the wolves fall away from the thing that had been Guayota. One of those wolves was Adam. Something inside me loosened. Adam was alive.

Guayota’s dog form dissolved around the man whom Christy had known as Juan Flores.

Though there were wolves all around him, it was my eyes Guayota sought. “I’m so hungry,” he said. “Where is she? She was supposed to be here.” And then there was just nothing where he’d stood. Nothing. No wisp of clothing falling to the ground, no dust or ash. He was just gone.

Adam turned to look at me, and I tried to get up. But the movement sent sparkles through my vision, and I was lost in darkness.

The smell of cleaning solution woke me briefly.

“…broken neck blah-blah-blah.” It sounded like Samuel, but there was something wrong with his voice. He sounded so sad, so I tried to listen. Maybe I could cheer him up. “And the burns … I’m sorry, Adam—”

Adam said something, and I sank into his voice like it was a warm sea.

“It’s probably better if you talk to me and don’t pay attention to all of that,” said Coyote.

I was lying on a thick field of new-mown grass that smelled a lot better than the cleaning fluid had. I watched the sky where small groups of clouds chased each other like little ducks.

“Mmmm,” I said dreamily.

Coyote chuffed a laugh. “They do have you on some strong stuff. But you’ll remember this anyway. Guayota isn’t dead. You can’t kill one of his kind unless you destroy what he represents. That need not concern you—although I wouldn’t be in a hurry to go visit the Canary Islands for a while. A few years, and he’ll forget. He shouldn’t have worn a human-seeming for so long.”

“Like you did when you became Joe Old Coyote,” I said.

“Not at all,” he told me indignantly. “That cloud looks like me, don’t you think?”

“The bigger one?” I asked.

“Yes, that one that looks like it’s about to eat an egg.”

“No. That one’s a rabbit.”

“Rabbit,” he said indignantly. “That’s a coyote.”

I laughed, but that was a mistake. My vision went black for a few minutes, then, slowly, the sky, clouds, and grass were back.

“Don’t do that,” said Coyote. “It makes it difficult to hold you here. I break things, a lot of things, but I don’t want one of them to be you. So just rest here.”

“What about…” It was difficult to be worried; most of me wanted to just watch the clouds drift by.

“Let me talk,” Coyote said. “You don’t know what questions you want to ask. Unusual decision to bring Joel into the pack. You could have used the walking stick to cut the threads of Guayota’s spell, and that would have done the same thing as you managed to do with the pack spell.” He paused. “Maybe. Maybe it would have just burned to ashes. I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the pack with a tibicena in it.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” I told him. “I gave the walking stick back to Beauclaire.”

“Did you?” said Coyote. “Hmm. Anyway, Guayota, being separated from that which gave him life—the volcano—needed two anchors to hold him in his human-seeming and allow him his power. Two anchors who were connected to his island. Why two? Why male and female? Who knows. Doubtless there is a reason, and if you meet him again, you might ask because the answer interests me.”

“Never,” I told him. “I am never going to the Canary Islands.”

There was a little silence beside me, and I realized that he was lying in the grass, too. “It’s supposed to be beautiful in the Canaries,” he said a little wistfully. “There’s this underground lake lit by torches…”

“No,” I told him.

“Maybe Gary will go,” Coyote said contemplatively. “But in any case, when you claimed Joel, tibicena and all, it threw the magic that allowed Guayota to live away from his island out of balance, and it unraveled.”

“Then Joel will go back to being just human?” I asked.

“That depends,” Coyote said.

“On what?” I turned my head, glimpsed his face, then my world went black again.

“Why don’t you just die?” hissed someone in my ear.

After a moment, I realized it was Christy.

“I know it was you. I know it. And now I look like a freak.” Something dripped on my cheek and touched my lips with salt.

“Mom,” said Jesse. She sounded appalled and … amused.

“She’s nasty and vindictive,” Christy said. “Everyone thinks she farts rainbows—and look what she did to me. I’m blue.” She wailed the last.

Christy had used the bottle of shampoo she’d left in my bathroom. I hoped the dye hadn’t stained the tile, but it would be worth it if it had. There were some noises, then Jesse’s breath was warm on my ear.

“She’s gone to get coffee, Mercy,” she told me. “I love her, but—the dye was inspired.” She giggled. “You are terrifying. I can’t believe you got her while you were…” She cleared her throat. “While you were in the hospital.” She laughed again. “I told her she should leave it. I’d dye my hair blue again, and we could be twins. Even Auriele laughed at her expression, though she turned her head so Mom couldn’t see.”

There was a long, peaceful silence, and then Jesse said, “I want so badly for her to be happy. But I can’t make her happy. All I can do is love her. Do you think that’s all right?” She patted the pillow beside my head. “You need to wake up pretty soon, though. Dad needs you. So do I.”

The sheets were very white and scratchy and the blankets too thin. My toes were cold, and I was lying on my side. I wiggled to try to pull my feet up and get them warm.

“Mercy?” Adam said.

“We need to get new blankets,” I told him, and he laughed.

“Whatever you want, sweetheart.”

I took a deep breath and realized that I really was awake because it hurt. The sun was shining, the AC was on too high, and I was in a hospital bed.

Adam leaned forward and kissed me. Then I kissed him back. With interest. He laughed and rested his forehead on mine, and I felt his whole body go limp.

“You are so stoned, baby,” he said.

“Am I fried?” I asked.

“What?” He rolled his head a little so he could see my face.

“Burned like a crispy steak,” I clarified.

“No. Not as bad as it could have been.” He hesitated. “Not as bad as it was, I think, is a better answer. The cheek scar will have a companion on your forearm, and I’m afraid the shotgun-pellet scars have some company. Might be a while before you are happy about walking on your left foot, but that was just blisters, and Samuel says it should heal with no scarring.”

“No modeling contract,” I said mournfully.

“Not in your future, no,” he said, and his dimple flirted with me. “You’ll have to make do with me.”

“Coyote said I was dying,” I told him. “And Christy wanted me to.”

“Coyote, eh?” He gave me an odd smile. “I went to grab some coffee that first night you were here, and when I got back, he was sitting on the edge of your bed. As a coyote.” He rubbed his face and took a deep breath. “Samuel said the first X-rays showed that you’d broken your neck. He … wasn’t optimistic. But after Coyote had his visit, things got better. As for Christy—” His skin next to mine flushed, and his eyes lightened to amber for just a moment. His voice was calm, though. “Christy has been banned from the hospital. She decided to stay at Auriele’s until she figures out whether she is going to move back to Eugene or job search over here. They managed to get the blue off her skin, but she had to dye her hair black. You are not her favorite person.”

“Auriele’s okay?” I asked, suddenly anxious.

“Shh,” he said. “Auriele is a werewolf. She was down for a couple of days, but, as of yesterday, she’s fine.”

The muzzy feeling was retreating. “How long have I been out?”

“Three days,” he said. “And you’ve only been mostly out. Samuel said you wouldn’t remember much of it, though. He also said that they’d probably let you out tomorrow morning. Since there are now no signs of a broken neck.”

“Joel?”

He laughed, a happy uncomplicated laugh. “And I thought I threw the fox in the henhouse when I brought you into the pack. Joel is … yesterday he stayed human for almost an hour.”

“Coyote said something about Joel.” But try as I might, I couldn’t remember what it was. “Coyote also said we should avoid visiting the Canary Islands for a couple of years.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” He was quiet for a while, resting his upper body alongside mine. Eventually, he sat up. “If I don’t move, I’m going to fall asleep,” he said. He looked tired. Beautiful, but tired. “I’m going to go find some food, and I’ll bring some back for you, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t cause any trouble.”

“Me?”

The dimple came out again. “I’ll be back soon.”

As soon as he left, I sat up and started unwiring myself. I had to pee, and I had no intention of letting my bathroom activities be a public event ever again. I wasn’t as bad off as I had been after the fight with the river devil. As long as I didn’t need a wheelchair—everything else was gravy.

I sat up and swung my legs down—and realized that Adam’s recitation of my injuries had limited itself to the burns. My left leg was encased from my toes to about six inches above my knee. My right forearm was bandaged, but my left elbow was immobilized by something with more structure. That I hadn’t felt them meant that I was still on a lot more drugs than I’d figured. I gave the IV still hooked to my right hand a look of respect and decided not to pull those out the way I’d intended to. The IV stand was on wheels—it could come, too.

I slid off the bed and got about six feet when it occurred to me that this might have been a bad idea. I wobbled, recovered, wobbled again, and would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed the walking stick at the last minute.

“Well, hello,” I told it. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”